Ending Homelessness Is Possible and This Is What it Looks Like

This is a guest post from Catherine An of the National Alliance to End Homelessness in response to a post from blogger David Henderson, "Why Ending Homelessness Is Impossible and How We Can Do It."

My thanks to David Henderson of Idealistics, Inc. for his recent review of the Ten Year Plan.

But his criticism of the definition of "ending homelessness"? Misguided, at best.

On any given night in this country, there are 672,000 homeless people. Over the course of a year, that number reaches into the millions. After years of steady decline -- homelessness decreased by ten percent from 2005 to 2007 -- the national homeless counts have stagnated.

And if that weren't enough, the recession has created a perfect storm for those at-risk: rising unemployment and job loss have produced skyrocketing need which have been met with strapped state budgets and diminishing resources.

The work ahead of us has never been more important.

And one critical tool for the work ahead is the Ten Year Plan. It streamlines everything we know to be effective at reducing and ending homelessness: focusing on data, permanent supportive housing, coordination of systems and building lasting infrastructure.

And most importantly: it works.

Communities that have adopted the principles of the Ten Year Plan -- 234 communities to date -- are seeing significant results:

• Salt Lake City, Utah housed 150 homeless families in four months.
• Quincy, Massachusetts and Wichita, Kansas decreased their chronic homeless population by over 50 percent.
• Norfolk, Virginia decreased its unsheltered population by 69 percent.

These are only a few examples of successes reaped through the Ten Year Plan. In every state across the country, more and more communities are adopting the central principles of the Ten Year Plan: rapid re-housing, prevention, systems integration and data collection.

Someday, there will come a time to squabble over the definition of "ending homelessness." We look forward to a time to debate what number or percentage or figure qualifies as an "end." But as communities strive to meet the needs of their struggling residents, we have a responsibility to equip them with all the knowledge and skills they need -- and leave semantics for another day.

People forget that homelessness is a modern phenomenon; fifty years ago, homelessness did not exist the way we see it today. And there's no reason that homelessness has to persist into an eternal tomorrow.

Photo credit: jontintinjordan